Sydney

We're in Sydney for a day before heading to Tom's sister's house outside Canberra. We spent the day we arrived recovering from both our drive to the Auckland airport with our balky GPS and the mad traffic-jam filled trip from the Sydney airport to our hotel. As far as we can tell from our road experience and the testimony of the hotel concierge there isn't really any driving in Sydney. Most time on the road is spent waiting in traffic jams. The GPS in our new rental car didn't care for the mass of stalled cars any more than the one in Tutukaka liked being asked to take us to the Auckland airport instead of back to our cottage. Let's just say in both cases there was a lot more recalculating than normally expected.

Tom selected our Sydney hotel for its location more than anything so it was a surprise to discover quite how chi-chi it is. We're on the 14th floor with a suite that includes a complete kitchen as well as laundry room. And it has a beautiful view of both the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the opera house. We would have posted a photo from our deck today except a behemoth cruise ship, Explorer of the Seas, docked across from the opera house last night and dwarfed it. The ship set sail tonight and I hope that by morning another ship hasn't taken its place before we can snap a couple of photos.

 

Anyway, this neighborhood is called “The Rocks” and it's right on the harbor. Sydney harbor is the largest in the world so although we took a cruise today we've only seen about a fifth of it. There's constant traffic on the water – ferries, water taxis, tour boats, private pleasure craft as well as sea-going tankers and cargo ships plus the occasional naval vessel. There's at least one tall ship sailing as well. The cruise we took is basically an all day pass on one line. We went about half way around their route and will probably finish it in the morning before we leave town. We stopped in Darling and toured the aquarium which we both loved. It not only had a bunch of tropical fish we'd never seen but a dugong (kind of like a manatee) that they'd rescued at one week old as well as local penguins. There were also beautiful sharks, skates and mantas that swam around, under and over us as we walked through glass walled tunnels. The reaction of the kids in our group was fantastic – the fish were Dory and Nemo and all well-loved. There was also an exhibit of jelly fish that was rather unworldly. They look so delicate it's hard to believe the waves don't tear them apart.

It was overcast today which kept the temperature under 90 - more than hot enough for me. It will be hotter at the in-laws' though. Monday is Australia Day, the commemoration of the first raising of the British flag here in 1788. I'm not sure what kind of celebration we'll see but everything closes down for a national holiday. No fireworks for sure – it's too dry and there's a high danger of fire. There's also a water shortage looming in the hot zone so I'm glad we did laundry here – I wasn't too keen on asking to do the wash right as we walked in the door only to discover there's no water for it.

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